How socioemotional setting modulates late-stage conflict resolution processes in the lateral prefrontal cortex

Abstract

The goal-directed control of behaviour critically depends on emotional regulation and constitutes the basis of mental well-being and social interactions. Within a socioemotional setting, it is necessary to prioritize effectively the relevant emotional information over interfering irrelevant emotional information to orchestrate cognitive resources and achieve appropriate behavior. Currently, it is elusive whether and how different socioemotional stimulus dimensions modulate cognitive control and conflict resolution. Theoretical considerations suggest that interference effects are less detrimental when conflicting emotional information is presented within a "positive socioemotional setting" compared with a "negative socioemotional setting." Using event-related potentials (ERPs) and source localization methods, we examined the basic system neurophysiological mechanisms and functional neuroanatomical structures associated with interactive effects of different interfering facial, socioemotional stimulus dimensions on conflict resolution. We account for interactive effects of different interfering socioemotional stimulus dimensions on conflict resolution, i.e., we show how the socioemotional valence modulates cognitive control (conflict processing). The data show that conflicts are stronger and more difficult to resolve in a negative emotional task-relevant setting than in a positive emotional task-relevant setting, where incongruent information barely induced conflicts. The degree of emotional conflict critically depends on the contextual emotional valence (positive or negative) in which this conflict occurs. The neurophysiological data show that these modulations were only reflected by late-stage conflict resolution processes associated with the middle (MFG) and superior frontal gyrus (SFG). Attentional selection processes and early-stage conflict monitoring do not seem to be modulated by interactive effects of different interfering socioemotional stimulus dimensions on conflict resolution.

Pushing to the Limits: What Processes during Cognitive Control are Enhanced by Reaction–Time Feedback?

“…For the current study, the data suggest that these processes are associated with the left MFG, a brain region associated with response selection under conflict and high attentional demands ( Hadland et al. 2001 ; Schreiter et al. 2018 ), as is the case in the incongruent condition after reaction–time feedback.…”

How the depth of processing modulates emotional interference – evidence from EEG and pupil diameter data

“…So, correlations between pupil reaction and neurophysiological signals corresponding to the P3 time window should be visible within a time frame of around 700 ms onwards. During emotional Stroop conflicts, it is well known that the P3 amplitudes are increased in emotionally congruent compared to incongruent trials (Clayson & Larson, 2013;Delplanque, Lavoie, Hot, Silvert, & Sequeira, 2004;Larson, Clayson, & Clawson, 2014;Schreiter et al, 2018b;Yang et al, 2013). Since an increased DOP is hypothesized to increase emotional Stroop effects, we also hypothesize that the P3 modulations between congruent and incongruent trials are also stronger when DOP is increased.…”

“…Considering the resolution of interferences, the N2 ERP-component is more negative during conflicting trials than on non-conflicting/non-interfering trials (Chen et al, 2016;Larson et al, 2014;Shang, Fu, Qiu, & Ma, 2016). However, due to the complexity of stimuli in word-face emotional Stroop tasks, no modulations of the N2 by interference effects have been observed (Schreiter, Chmielewski, & Beste, 2018a;Schreiter et al, 2018b). Therefore, we do not expect to observe amplitude modulations and differential correlations with the pupil diameter in the N2 time window.…”

“…The ability to process relevant emotional information and ignore irrelevant emotional information is central for emotional self-regulation (Berg et al, 2016;Marusak, Martin, Etkin, & Thomason, 2015;Ochsner & Gross, 2005). These processes have extensively been examined using emotional interference (Stroop) tasks (Egner, Etkin, Gale, & Hirsch, 2008;Etkin, Egner, & Kalisch, 2011;Kunde & Mauer, 2008;McKenna & Sharma, 2004;Pan, Lu, Chen, Wu, & Li, 2016;Saunders, Milyavskaya, & Inzlicht, 2015;Schreiter, Chmielewski, & Beste, 2018b;Zinchenko, Kanske, Obermeier, Schröger, & Kotz, 2015). In the face-word Stroop task, for example, emotional faces are presented together with an emotional word that is either congruent or incongruent with the presented emotional face (Egner et al, 2008(Egner et al, , 2008Etkin et al, 2011;Kerns et al, 2004;Marusak et al, 2015).…”

Neural correlates of sex-related differences in attachment dimensions

“…The EEG data for each subject was segmented into epochs starting 100 ms before the presentation of the stimulus until 700 ms after stimulus onset. The artefact detention was set to 200 μV for bad channels (noisy electrodes), to 150 μV for eye blinks (detected on specific electrodes pairs: left: 37-241/32-241 and right: 18-238/25-238), and to 100 μV for the electrodes detecting eye movements (left: 252 and right: 226; Electrical Geodesic, Inc., Eugene, OR, USA; Bourisly & Shuaib, 2018 ; Lai et al, 2018 ; Luan, Yao, & Bai, 2017 ; Picton et al, 2000 ; Schreiter, Chmielewski, & Beste, 2018 ). The segments containing eye blinks, eye movements, or more than 15 bad channels were excluded.…”